For pretty much my entire adult life, I’ve been overweight, or even obese. I really don’t know what I weighed when I graduated high school, but, certainly by the end of college, my Body Mass Index (BMI) was over 25, likely over 30. I can find pictures from the late Nineties when it’s pretty obvious. Yet, my wife still married me when I looked like this (from 1998):

A family member had a double-bypass in 2001, which was the year after I started bike commuting. This got me thinking a bit more about what I ate. I stepped up my cycling, something I did half-hardheartedly since college. While I was 194 pounds for a couple months in 2004, pretty much, since then, I danced around 208 pounds, varying a bit depending on season, my attitude, stress, etc. This put my BMI just a hair under 30, the line between “overweight” and “obese.”

I had the best of intentions of dealing with it. I was very unhappy at work, so I allowed myself to stress eat. I knew what I should and shouldn’t eat, and how much. I just didn’t want to deal with it. Some level of depression and unjustified guilt kept me from riding as much as I probably would have liked. I kept telling myself: get a new job, then we’ll work on the weight.

There was part of me that was honest with myself. It’s easy to imagine that, if I were to get a new job, giving myself a pass “for a few months while I settle in.” Or some other excuse. Without admitting it, I had resigned myself to being 208 pounds, give or take, for the rest of my life. Change, after all, is hard.

Last spring, my wife started to leverage a few tools to try to lose weight. And, it worked very well for her. Work got a bit better, and I started to realize that I could not put my life on hold for a job hunt. A year ago today (September 26, 2013), I started to use her system, tweaked a bit for my preferences. It was right at the start of the “Renew the Zoo” campaign.

The tools centered, for me, around My Fitness Pal, where I logged everything I ate, and any exercise I did. I already captured a lot of information from cycling, so that went in there. A FitBit captured “incidental movement”–walking to and from the bus, at the grocery store, etc. As Fall turned to Winter, I got to the gym more regularly, doing videos from The Sufferfest. Pants became loser, then replaced. I started setting personal bests on the bike in February, a time when historically I lost strength.

In April, my BMI went under 25, moving from “overweight” to “normal” for the first time since…well, I couldn’t really tell you. I continued with the process, carefully weighing and tracking what I eat and exercising. What surprised me was that, while not “easy,” how quickly I adapted to cutting out a lot of the crap I was consuming. I still enjoy things, just that I’m more selective. I’m better about choices being “or,” not “and.”

A good contrast is below. On the left, a photo taken of me at the end of July, 2013. On the right, wearing the same shirt, is me in mid-July 2014.

As of last Saturday, I lost a total of fifty-five and a half pounds. I still have a bit more I want to lose, mostly so I’m more cleanly in the size pants I currently am wearing. However, I feel a lot better, both physically and mentally. I’ll continue to these tools, or ones like it, as I work to maintain my weight. This does not strike me as a problem. As we say in the Information Technology business, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This is simply a way I can manage my body better, giving me control. I hope to continue to make healthier choices, stress-biking rather than stress-eating.

It’s been amazing to see the change. The snowball effect of losing weight, eating better, and exercising more consistently has made me feel better. Even my daughter says I’m happier now. When I look at the results–pictures, bike logs, or scales–I can easily see why. It’s my hope I’m able to keep this moving forward, and sustain this.